


Songs of the Heart

by Drag0nst0rm



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Age, Gen, Maedhros does not do well in captivity, Maglor and Maedhros Surrendered
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 09:39:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18070943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drag0nst0rm/pseuds/Drag0nst0rm
Summary: It's not that Earendil isn't glad that the kinslayers are in custody.It's just that he's not entirely happy that the place they're currently in custody at is his ship.





	Songs of the Heart

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own the Silmarillion. 
> 
> An AU I wrote for the prompt event for factorialrabbits, who wanted Maglor and Earendil and "don't do the thing I'm giving you detailed instructions on how to get away with."
> 
> Set in an AU where Maglor won that argument and the Feanorians surrendered.
> 
> This Earendil is angrier than my usual because he hasn't the time to calm down that he did in "To Catch a Falling Star" and he doesn't have his sons right there like he did in "And Family Means No One Gets Left Behind."

“You’re making the guards uneasy,” Earendil said, even as the door swung shut behind him.

Maglor looked up from his place on the edge of the room’s one bed, but he didn’t answer. Earendil hadn’t expected him to. The mightiest singer of the Noldor might still be able to hum through his gag, with enough power to make elves drowsy and enough volume to trouble the guards, but even he couldn’t talk through it.

Maedhros didn’t even look up. He was asleep even though it was the middle of the day, though admittedly, they probably didn’t know that, locked in the lowest part of the ship as they were with only the lanterns for light. And with Maedhros’s one whole arm chained to the bed, resting was probably the easiest thing to do.

He started shifting, though, the moment that Maglor stopped humming. Maglor immediately started up again, and it occurred to Earendil that despite the guards’ fears, it probably wasn’t them the song had been aimed at.

It was a reasonable thought.

Standing in front of the two men that had sacked his city, nearly killed his wife, and stolen his children, he didn’t particularly want to be reasonable.

“Stop it,” he ordered. Maglor glanced between him and his brother before the notes slowly, reluctantly, trailed away. Maedhros immediately began to twist in the bed once again, but that wasn’t Earendil’s problem. He had come to talk, and for this one kinslayer was as good as the other. He untied the thick strips of cloth from Maglor’s gag, as his kinslaying cousin could not with his chained hands.

Maglor exhaled a bit in relief and said, “He won’t rest long without the music. Not unless you’re willing to sacrifice a truly unfortunate amount of wine, and even that won’t work as well.”

“He’s rested long enough,” Earendil said. If the kinslayer was troubled by dark dreams, than he wasn’t inclined to stop it. Maybe there was some fragment of a conscience left in there after all.

Maglor’s eyes flicked to his brother - no, to his brother’s wrist, he realized. The one that still had a hand attached. “He needs to rest,” Maglor said quietly, and -

Oh.

The chained wrist was a mess of blood from where the chain had cut into it, dangerously deep. The chain itself couldn’t be that tight, though, surely, but if … And as Maedhros’s thrashings became more violent and more blood welled up, he saw he was right. Only when Maedhros struggled did it cut so deeply.

“If he was awake, he wouldn’t irritate it.”

Maglor’s eyes were dark. “If he was awake,” he said, “it would be much, much worse.”

Earendil wanted to shake him. Wanted to beat him black and blue with his bare hands and demand answers. Wanted the hot anger that was still waiting, fresh and dangerous in his mind.

He did not want to feel sorry for either of the gaunt, scarred elves on the thin bed, but he couldn’t quite help it.

“Why don’t you sing me a story then?” he suggested. “That way we can both get what we want.”

Maglor seemed a bit relieved. “I’m always willing to sing for an audience,” he agreed. “What song would you like? I doubt you want the one I was attempting for him.”

It was an irrelevant point, but Earendil asked anyway. “What song was that? I didn’t recognize it at all.”

A ghost of a smile flickered over the kinslayer’s face. “You wouldn’t. It’s fairly new as these things go. Only a few decades old. ‘The Return of the Mariner,’ I think I called it. Maedhros always hated it, but it has an inordinate amount of verses, and it’s a lullaby, so it served well enough.” Maedhros’s thrashings grew almost violent, and Maglor quickly took up a few of those verses. Maedhros stilled almost immediately.

Earendil grabbed his arm. “Enough,” he said, and not just because he was beginning to feel drowsy himself. 

Maglor stopped.

“I was in that song. And Elwing.” He hadn’t realized it at first, the bold adventures in it so unlike the hard press through the storms he knew his real journey to have been, but they’d been in it.

“Of course. They wanted to know where their parents were. And I - “ Maglor shrugged, shoulders tight, mouth turned unhappily. “I truly thought you would come at first, that Elwing would find you and lead you back, but after years of nothing, I thought you both most likely dead. Wrecked on your way home, perhaps, or wrecked on your way to Valinor, what difference did it make? But I could hardly tell them that. Your continuing adventures served well enough, first on the seas, and then, after the star showed up, in the skies. I still thought you were dead,” he added after a moment. “But it was easier to tell them that you were getting a little bit closer every day. I sang them a new verse each night until - “ He looked away.

“Until?” Earendil prompted.

“Elros was very angry when he reached a certain age,” Maglor said quietly. “He said everyone knew you’d gotten safely to Valinor and left the rest of us to face Morgoth, and it was no use spinning fairytales otherwise.”

News about his sons was what he had come from, but it still didn’t soften the blow. “And Elrond?”

Maglor’s mouth twisted even more unhappily. “Elrond eventually convinced him you had died. I don’t know - I didn’t know what to tell them.”

“We thought they were dead,” Earendil said numbly. “If we’d known - If we’d had any idea - “

“If any of us had known even a little more, a great many things might have been different,” Maglor said tiredly. “I once made a very similar mistake,” and this time he looked at where his brother’s other hand should have been. The abbreviated arm was already starting to twist once more. “They’re older now. They’ll understand, once they make the voyage. You can explain.”

“Elros has chosen Men,” Earendil said, and he still couldn’t quite accept it. That his son, still living though he was, was still forever out of his reach. “He will not sail.”

Maglor flinched as if he had been struck. 

“Tell me of them, kinslayer. Tell me of all the moments I should have had.”

“Alright,” Maglor said one he had recovered his voice. “Alright. This song, at least, will not send you to sleep.”

It was not a heroic song, nor, spun as it was on the moment, probably one of the singer’s best.

Earendil clung to every golden note.

When it was done, and the singer slumped exhausted and grieved, Earendil stood and considered the cloth gag in his hand. 

Then he wrapped it as carefully as he could around Maedhros’s wrist to stem the bleeding and pad the chain. 

He looked at Maglor. “The guards asked me to remind you that singing is forbidden,” he told him. “Though with the door as thick as it is and with how much the next shift likes to talk, I don’t know they’d know know if you were doing it.”

He turned away before he had to look too long at the gratitude in the kinslayer’s eyes. 

Someday, maybe he could forgive him for the sake of the mercy he had shown.

Not yet.

But he heard the fruits of his own mercy as the sound of Maedhros’s thrashings once again eased to the sound of the bard’s tired voice, quiet as the drizzling of the very softest spring rains. It was the same golden tune he was committing to memory, desperately impressing every word of two dark haired twins.

It stopped for a moment when he opened the door, and no sound could be heard over the new guards’ chattering when he closed it.

Just the mariner’s own voice, quietly humming the tune.


End file.
